Evolution Of The Freeway System Essay

I have lived in California for the entirety of my life. While widely known for its beauty, California is much more locally known for its twisty, turny roads that traverse mountains, the pacific coast, hills, valleys, deserts, and forests. Surrounded by this environment has allowed me to develop a passion for travel and nature which has inspired me to work toward further developing and restructuring modern transportation methods such as trains, buses, bridges, and roadways. I believe that I can contribute to a future where faster travel allows people to spend more time interacting face-to-face and I plan to effect this change by pursuing a career in civil engineering and rallying for better environmental protection programs while educating myself

Britain’s first motorway , the 13 km Preston bypass was opened in 1958, and following this the Goverment planned to improve 6750km of road to at least dual carriageway standard to form strategic inter-urban network for England. This network was marked as a national commitment, which would enhance road safety, be easily connected to all major centres of population, promote economic growth and regional development.

With the advent of automobiles, post the second World War, the design of cities started focusing more on the use cars. Architects conformed to the municipal zoning ordinances

Traffic in downtown Austin, Texas is becoming a sever issue and is continuing to become slower and more congested every day. Austin ranks 4th on a list of U.S. cities with the least efficient roadways, and with its remarkable growth rate, the issue can only get worse. After reading numerous articles based on opinions and statements from local city planners and engineers, the best way to see an improvement in the traffic issue is to increase the amount of public transportation in the Austin area. The increase of public transportation would provide fast travel time and would help reduce the amount of money, commuters and locals use on gas by a substantial amount per year. Though many may argue the that we have enough public transportation already, reducing the number of personal vehicles on the road would decrease the amount of bumper to bumper traffic experienced on a daily basis, as well as increase the options for those commuting to the city every day. there are many possible solutions, such as widening the highways or even building them underground, these solutions however are not the most economically correct and productive way to relieve traffic downtown.

Proposition 35 simply gives state and local government the flexibility to use private sector engineers and architects to complete long overdue highway, rail transit and other projects sooner, safely, and at $2.5 billion savings to taxpayers. Supporters of Proposition 35 highlight a few important points, including thousands of overdue highway and rail transit projects that must be completed to alleviate traffic and prepare us for the next quake. In order to complete these thousands of projects both Caltrans and private sector engineers and architects are needed to complete those projects. However, Caltrans bureaucrats stand in the way of accomplishing this by severely restricting government's ability to contract with the private sector. Proposition 35 is the answer to these problems. Proposition 35 is

The advantages listed provided two main advantages to the University City area, those advantages include: a decrease in travel time and traffic congestion relief (Lovelace 1952, 2-3). Consequently, the expressway would have created six major disadvantages to University City (Lovelace 1952, 3). The disadvantages include: depreciating the nearby residential area greatly, depreciate the Delmar business district, local traffic issues, unreasonable costs, removal of the street car system in University city and increase traffic complications in downtown St. Louis” (Lovelace 1952,

Urban sprawl was a major problem and had many negative effects. "Suburban sprawl, “called urban sprawl was a result of overpopulation. Sprawl occurred when cities spread outward. Forests and farmland were being destroyed to create new housing subdivisions, shopping centers, offices, parking areas, civic institutions and roadways. State governments built highways and roads to serve all the new commuters moving in and out of the city. Developers chose to build on less expensive land farther away from the urban core. Land prices were lower and housing in these developments was more affordable. Some people chose a longer commute in exchange for more comfortable, low-priced housing. The sprawl was a chronological process that devastated the land and life of the American people. This problem described here continues to be a problem. And many people are unaware that urban sprawl continues to be a problem. Friendly neighborhoods, traditional pedestrian have fallen victim to this problem. Environmental activists claimed that urban sprawl, was a substantial environmental threat. But activists concerned about sprawl should concentrate on existing government policies that encourage suburban development and prevent greater redevelopment of urban areas.

The author Jeff Speck is city planner and an urban designer. He is trying to save Americans lives by trying to make the city more walkable since automobiles have now become a great danger to the Americans. This book is more concerned with cars and buildings in order to achieve the goal of a walkable city. People are the lifeblood of the city and not cars therefore, in order to pull off the feat of ushering America to the urban century, there is need to prove to people that walkability is important and also that their actions and decisions will help will to improve this aspect.

In the third debate in class, we talked about Tollway vs. freeway. A tollway is an open or private road for which a free or toll is evaluated for passage. It is a shape of road pricing typically executed to help recover the cost of road maintenance and construction. Tollway requires vehicles to stop or back off; manual toll gathering sits wastes time and raises vehicle working expenses. The activity redirection coming about because of the tolls expands congestion on the road system and makes it less useful. A freeway is a controlled-get to a multi-path expressway that does not have tolls. Traffic flow on a highway is unhindered in light of the fact that there are no moving signals, convergences, or at-level crossings with different railroads, streets, or passerby ways. Ways out and entrances to the highway are given at interchanges by slippy streets, which consider speed changes between the interstate and collector streets. Opposing directions of travel are for the most part isolated by a focal reservation containing a traffic obstruction, grass, or a median strip. This eliminates the contentions with other directions and enhances safety and limit.

Our transportation system, quite arguably, may embody our most vital system, as Infrastructure and Democracy clarifies, “access is the hallmark of a great infrastructure” (Jones, Reinecke). By great contrast, our roads remain a current issue. 42 percent of America’s urban highways remain congested, costing the United States 101 billion dollars in wasted time and fuel each year. Also, the32 percent of roads, in poor or mediocre condition, cost the average traveler $324 per year (American Infrastructure Report Card). Unfortunately, updating the highway systems seems longer than it may seem, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that from proposal to completion most highways will need nine to nineteen years to fix (Leduc, Wilson 129). In addition to the roads, our bridges are failing just as much. One of every nine bridges within the United States is categorized as structurally deficient. The average bridge 42 years old, and in order to eliminate the bridge renovation backlog, our country would need to invest twenty and a half billion dollars until 2028 (American Infrastructure Report Card). However, in 2013, the United States only invested 12.8 billion dollars in bridge reconstruction and repair (American Infrastructure Report Card). Also, our countries transit

Public transportation is serious need of a massive overhaul in this nation. We are in desperate need to catch up to the European standard of public transportation in this country. In Europe, citizens can travel across cities, bodies of water, and even counties with their state of the art public transportation system. Europeans are not nearly as reliant on cars and oil as the United States is because they have the much more practical option of taking the transportation provided to them by the government to where ever they need to go. They have set a model that the United States needs to strive for and meet in the near future.

The development of every nation hinges on the effectiveness of their transportation systems. Movement of goods, services and people to and from work is made possible by transportation systems. The importance of effective transportation systems cannot be over-emphasized. A lot of countries are facing Transportation problems and my country Ghana is no exception. A trip of about 30 minutes can take about an hour or more due to traffic jams. This is seriously impacting productivity and has been a topical issue in the country. The situation is the same in Uganda where I currently work. To this end, Transportation Engineers are needed to design roads/ highways that will stand the test of time, plan effective traffic management systems to reduce travel

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

An emerging issue is that of urban sprawl. While some aspects of urban sprawl has been seen since ancient times, this phenomenon has started gaining the most momentum in the past century, aided by the advancement of technology, especially with the rise of mass produced automobiles, houses and highway systems. Many people unknowingly contribute to this environmental problem, as is the nature of it. Urban sprawl deals with the growth of the suburbs, the area between the urban and rural areas of a city. Most of America’s largest cities and states, in terms of population, are prime examples of urban sprawl. Opponents of urban sprawl usually cite the government as a major cause of sprawl. The government may be a major catalyst of

The objective of this paper is to understand the modes of road transportation, the role of road transportation in urban areas, the role of transportation infrastructure in